Policy

It would be easier to name the tech CEOs who didn’t show up to the state dinner being held for China’s president this week. Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and AMD’s Lisa Su. Also in attendance, but not pictured below, were reportedly Satya Nadella, Michael Dell, Zoom’s Eric Yuan, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon, and, of course, David Ellison.

On Friday, OpenAI said its “misaligned models” review after the Hugging Face hack would take months, but has mostly found mundane research activity. Then it mentioned 53 incidents of the bots uploading “user-provided” images (anonymized content from personal accounts that haven’t opted out or organizations that opt in) to image-hosting sites.

That revamped Trump admin app (now offering access to Trump TV) apparently bounced up to the top of the News list this week.

It’s reportedly testing an alternative to Windows based on the Dutch Linux distro NixOS, according to Tweakers. It’s part of DAWO, a program aimed at reducing the Dutch government’s reliance on non-European tech, including things like office and collaboration apps. Earlier this year, France’s government also announced a switch to Linux.

NBC News released this clip from a Meet the Press interview with Gates that will air on Sunday, where he said, “No one thinks self-regulation is enough” around AI.

This time the finding is in connection to Meta’s claims about privacy, and enforcement of its misinformation policies. The case stems from a 2021 lawsuit brought by the state’s attorney general at the time, over claims related to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The judge will determine penalties next.

I chatted with Charlie Warzel over at The Atlantic to try to untangle this moment of massive outrage over smart glasses and Flock cameras. In August I reported on the service workers who encounter Meta glasses at their jobs, and the harassment — and social media clout — that sometimes follows.

If you want to know where the power in tech currently lies, you only need to look at this photo of the head table at Donald Trump’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping. I see Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, AMD’s Lisa Su, Apple’s Tim Cook, and SpaceXaiTesla’s Elon Musk seated by the leaders of the world’s two superpowers. The CEOs and / or founders of Alphabet (Google), OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, Qualcomm, Micron, Dell, and… Zoom, were also in attendance.

Trump officials filed a motion to support X’s appeal, arguing the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) enforcement overreached when levying the fine last December, and unfairly targets American tech platforms while threatening digital free speech and global market operations.

On Thursday, Trump posted a picture to Truth Social of himself with Chinese President Xi Jinping that doesn’t comport with Getty Images of the event. Why does Trump only have one glove? Why did the face of the woman in the background change? The answer could include anything from uprezzing to “zooming out” the camera to deliberately replacing faces with AI.

According to The Information, the companies will call it the Standards Authority for Frontier AI, or SAFA, which could launch by early 2027. It would handle AI safety regulation tasks like “supporting third-party organizations that conduct testing of models before they’re deployed and laying out how AI developers should report safety and security incidents.”

Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order as part of the publications’ lawsuit against the Trump administration, filed after their press credentials were revoked. It orders the admin to restore the credentials, but only lasts for 14 days while the lawsuit rumbles on.

The Theranos founder convicted of fraud in 2022 and sentenced to 11 years behind bars will be transferred from a minimum-security federal prison next year, according to a letter sent to victims of her crime. After several reductions to her sentence, her scheduled release remains February 22nd, 2030, but prisoners typically only spend a short time in halfway houses. Last year, she requested to have her sentence commuted by the Department of Justice.

There’s still a standby line to get into the Senate Judiciary crime and counterterrorism subcommittee’s hearing about “Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network.” Chair Josh Hawley (R-MO) invited the CEOs of Flock and its peers, Axon, Motorola Solutions, and Verkada, but said they declined.

Ofcom is taking a deeper look at Pornhub provider Aylo’s compliance with online safety rules. The media watchdog’s enforcement director George Lusty says, “We expect tech firms to ensure age checks are highly effective before introducing them.” Aylo relies on Apple’s age verification system, which is not being scrutinized under the investigation.

Over the weekend, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will penalize creators for failing to disclose paid political content, with fines reaching up to $5,000 per violation, The New York Times reports.

Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to stop granting permits to data centers while the state finishes an audit of the facilities that want to connect to its electric grid. Last week, Abbott also told state regulators to “impose legal consequences” on data centers that don’t disclose information about water usage.

404 Media reports, with Reuters corroborating in part, that hackers from ShinyHunters claim to have obtained information on “all FBI employees and applicants.” The data reportedly includes phone numbers, home addresses, dates of birth, and “in some cases” details on spouses. The group also reportedly defaced the FBI jobs page earlier today, which is currently displaying a “system unavailable” banner.

20 countries — including Canada, Germany, UAE and Singapore — endorsed stronger checks on advanced models. The European Commission also signed.

According to Reuters, the settlement with California and 11 other states “includes the creation of independent editorial boards for CNN and CBS” as well as “a $30 million penalty per film for any shortfall against Paramount’s pledge ​to release 30 movies annually.”

They said Monday that they plan to challenge the White House’s move to revoke their journalists’ press credentials:

Features like Web & App Activity, Location History, and Location Accuracy were found to violate GDPR privacy rules in Europe from 2018 to 2020.

It’s unclear what military advantage there would be to storing “large quantities of sniper ammunition” and “large numbers of drones” in the DC arch. The area already has a significant military presence. But this is the same tactic Trump used to argue for his ballroom, which suddenly became a national security issue when it faced legal challenges.